One of the last globes from the Price/Senex partnership.

Biography
John Senex (1678-1740) was apprenticed to the London bookseller Robert Clavell in 1695, branching out on his own in 1702. Between 1703 and 1706 Senex formed an early partnership to produce instruments with Jeremiah Seller and Charles Price, the successors of John Seller. Senex continued in partnership with Price until 1710, and he then joined forces with John Maxwell, by which time he had gained a reputation as a successful publisher of atlases, maps and geographical texts. He produced his first set of 325mm (12 inch) globes in 1706, and then, in 1710, just before his split with Price, a pair of pocket globes. In 1728 Senex was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1738 he presented a paper to the Society with suggestions for making a celestial globe into a precession globe. His globes were held in such high regard that one appears in a portrait by Richard Wilson of George III and his brother Frederick with their tutor: “if we can judge from survival rates and geographical spread, he was the greatest globe-maker of his day” (Worms). Following his death, Senex’s publishing interests were continued by his widow, Mary. In 1755 his stock was acquired at auction by James Ferguson. Only one set of plates escaped, the Senex-Price celestial pocket globe and those for a newly engraved matching terrestrial sphere, which went to the celebrated instrument maker George Adams Snr (1704-1772).

Herman Moll (?1654-1732) moved to London from Germany or the Low Countries, sometime before 1678. His career in London would span some 60 years and see him move from a jobbing engraver to a successful publisher of maps and atlases. He was part of the intellectual circle that gathered at Jonathan’s Coffee House, counting Robert Hooke, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift amongst his acquaintance. Moll even provided a map for Defoe’s work ‘Robinson Crusoe’ showing the track of Crusoe’s supposed voyage, and is mentioned by Lemuel Gulliver in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.

Geography
This globe is one of the last that Senex produced in partnership with Charles Price, and it follows English cartography. The prime meridian is labelled “the Meridian of London” and the equator is graduated and labelled “the Aequinoctial”. The ecliptic is graduated and labelled “the Ecliptic” with notations with the symbols of the zodiac. The location of the Antipodes to London is marked and the trade winds are indicated by lines between the tropics. California is drawn as an island, and Australia is drawn according to the Dutch discoveries, Tasmania is labelled “Dimens Land” and the east coast of New Zealand appears as “Zeland”. The Dampier Strait is labelled “Dampiers Str.”. There is no hypothetical southern continent but inside the Antarctic circle is a label “Incognita”. Around the North Pole, there is an inaccurate quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, III, 56 “Quo non Mortalia pectora cogit Auri sacra fames” [“To what extremes you will not drive the hearts of men, accurst hunger for gold!”].

Astronomy
The celestial globe gores, pasted to the inner lining of the case, are a later edition of Herman Moll’s 1710 globe, ‘A Correct Globe with New Constelations of Mr. Hevelius. 1719’ [sic]. There is a magnitude table in front of Ursa Major, titled “Magnitu. Stel” and the Milky Way is labelled “via Lactea”. 48 Ptolemaic constellations are shown, with Crater spelt “Ciater”, and the non-Ptolemaic constellations: Coma Bernices, Crosero, Columba Noachi. The southern constellations of Plancius appear, as well as those of Hevelius, as mentioned in the title cartouche. In the later anonymous pocket globe published in c1775, the cartouche is updated to name Halley instead of Hevelius.